Ireland Pending

By popular demand, I will be keeping a good old fashioned blog during my study abroad experience to Ireland.  Great men throughout history have kept blogs of their fascinating endeavors (Julius Caesar in Gaul, St. Luke with his gospel, Confucius with his proverbs, Huckleberry Finn and his adventures, my cousin Kevin Ryan, etc), and it would be privy for me to follow in the footsteps of these inspiring leaders.

This coming Saturday (August 28), I will be flying from JFK into Dublin, where I will begin my semester abroad.  After a week of orientation, I will be bused or trained or rickshawed to the University of Limerick where I will receive my formal schooling.  This will be my first trip into another country, and vicariously the first time I will be immersed in another culture.  There will be a lot of adjusting to be done (I might have to start spelling "color" with a "u" in it somewhere), and there will most likely be plenty of moments in social situations where my misunderstanding of Irish cultural norms will leave me confused and feeling rather awkward.  For your amusement, these moments will be well documented within this blog.

This blog is entitled, "A Redhead in Ireland," because I will find it interesting how the Irish will react to such a foreign and unknown hair color (they have blue hair over there, right?). As such, you can easily access this blog at this URL:

http://aredheadinireland.blogspot.com

I wanted just "Redhead in Ireland," but that name and URL is already taken by somebody else who spent a semester abroad in Ireland, who (after closely/creepily inspecting her pictures) doesn't even have red hair!  That should be illegal.  But I'm not bitter or anything. Just don't forget the "A" when you search for me, or else you'll find that other stupid person.  But I'm not bitter or anything.

Anyway, I hope to have more interesting things to say when I actually get my butt over there.  Until then, coinnigh do bhróg chlé ar!


Link to a Google Map of my soon-to-be school (zoom out for its relation to the rest of Ireland): http://bit.ly/c3Zirh